Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo

Indian philosopher and poet.

A prominent Indian philosopher and spiritual leader who developed Integral Yoga, which aims at the transformation of human nature into a divine consciousness. His writings explore the evolution of consciousness and the potential for a spiritual awakening that includes not just personal enlightenment but also the transformation of society. His work emphasizes the integration of spiritual practice with everyday life and the pursuit of a higher, evolutionary purpose.

Sri Aurobindo Quotes about Divine

  • What is required is faith. Man has body, life and mind but that is not all that constitutes man. He has risen to the mind as a result of evolution. Now a higher consciousness will be evolved - this I call Supermind. It is the instrument of the Divine Consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness.
  • The anarchic is the true divine state of man in the end as in the beginning; but in between it would lead us straight to the devil and his kingdom.
  • The cup has to be left clean and empty for the divine liquor to be poured into it.
  • There is therefore no reason to put a limit to evolutionary possibility by taking our present organization or status of existence as final. The animal is a laboratory in which Nature has worked out man; man may very well be a laboratory in which she wills to work out superman, to disclose the soul as a divine being, to evolve a divine nature.
  • All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only, - those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders.
  • The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy.
  • Threefold are those supreme births of this divine force that is in the world, they are true, they are desirable; he moves there wide-overt within the Infinite and shines pure, luminous and fulfilling.... Of that which is in mortal in mortals, and possessed of the truth, is a God and established inwardly as an energy working out in our divine powers.... Become high uplifted, O Strength, pierce all veils, manifest in as the things of the Godhead.
  • The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would only be an insect crawling among the ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.
  • One has to do sadhana for the total manifestation of the Divine in oneself.
  • Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger ideas of it that are now coming on us even the greatest religion becomes no more than a broad sect or branch of the one universal religion, by which we shall understand in the future man's seeking for the eternal, the divine, the greater self, the source of unity and his attempt to arrive at some equation, some increasing approximation of the values of human life with the eternal and the divine values.
  • The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching divine Being.
  • Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested. The material world exists because an idea began to play in divine self-consciousness.
  • To have a developed intellect is always helpful if one can enlighten it from above and turn it to a divine use.
  • The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth.
  • The language of the Veda itself is sruti, a rhythm not composed by the intellect but heard, a divine Word that same vibrating out of the Infinite to the inner audience of the man who had previously made himself fit for the impersonal knowledge.
  • Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it & use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use.
  • Stand aside and watch the working of the divine power in yourself.
  • Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.
  • Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities.
  • Man is a transitional being, he is not final; for in him and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees which climb to a divine supermanhood. The step from man towards superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth's evolution. There lies our destiny and the liberating key to our aspiring, but troubled and limited human existence – inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature's process.
  • If it be true that spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation in the divine in himself and the realization of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man on earth.
  • Even in rags I am a god, fallen I am divine, high I triumph when down-trod, long I live when slain!
  • All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time and finally decline and perish. Mahomed himself never pretended that the Koran was the last message of God and there would be no other. God and Truth outlast these religions and manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses.
  • Trust the divine power, and she will free the godlike elements in you and shape all into an expression of divine nature.
  • The highest aim of the aesthetic being is to find the Divine through beauty; the highest Art is that which by an inspired use of significant and interpretative form unseals the door of the spirit.